In Paris, nothing happens on that level. If you do want to come to Paris it's because of the amazing food, lifestyle, public transportation system, and certainly not because of the amazing startups we should have.
I don't know any developer in Paris that do a 35 hours week. Actually it's even the contrary, French managers have a strong culture of evaluating employees performance based on presence. So you see a lot of peoples doing 10-12 hours a day, or coming back to the office on saturday.
It's still better than the US, "cadre" status (but not top management) is officially around 180-190 day of work per year (depending on the unions).
In SF, it's often necessary and hardly ever sufficient.
+1.
I think it's a core deep cultural issue about France. The whole system is completely corrupted, people are used to get "passe-droit" (not sure about the translation) for anything, and even the top Political leaders are acting this way. Politician asking cops not to be fined for something illegal they just did, a friend of a friend asking the School President to let their kid attend their school, etc.
The whole French society is based on this. Many say it's a Monarchy, and not a Republic.